This isn’t Luhmann’s zettelkasten

[OogieM]

@nationalinterest

it is hard to view them in a visual way that also supports rapid rearrangement

I guess it’s just me but I never really even thought about or tried to rearrange links visually. I can’t see how that would even work but I don’t think visually at all. I tend to be very linear and regimented in how I organize stuff. For me it’s faster and far easier to just move a link around in a document I’d never thing to drag the document to make the link or change its position.

@Bmosbacker

An option is Scrivener’s Note Card feature

FWIW I tried that as a way to move blocks around in NaNoWriMo events and also to link and coordinate ideas for LambTracker Development.

I guess I’m not that visual, all I found was that it was painfully slow to work with and I don’t think I ever got any benefits from seeing my notes/chapters as cards.

It may be the same reason I’ve never taken to mind maps at all. They seem useless to me as I can do everything I need to in an outline faster and with far less friction compared to every mind mapping tool I’ve ever looked at. And I’ve tried a bunch of mindmap tools.

OTOH for some reason I can use the Obsidian graph view to find things I need to work on easily.

But I don’t try to move them in the graph view, I move them or link them in the text but review the work in the local graph.

[Bmosbacker]

@OogieM

It may be the same reason I’ve never taken to mind maps at all

I use mind maps for things like revising a department structure and the like but I use OmniOutliner for outlining presentations and articles.

[jcarucci]

I find local graphs a whole lot more useful than the big graph of all my notes which is more like a Jackson Pollock painting than anything else.

[msteffens]

Local graphs are indeed more useful.

@msteffens

it’s possible to combine the approaches: If you find out that you benefit from more hierarchical notes where individual notes follow a linear thread, then:

1. use a structure/overview/TOC/MOC note which organises individual notes into a hierarchical order
2. link individual notes together with “next” links (or, if possible, typed links like [[followed by:...]])

To illustrate this point, I’ve taken the linear “Folgezettel”-style example from above:

When you include a structure/overview/TOC/MOC note that links to all topics/subtopics you get a radial appearance:

I.e., with the same note connections, leaving out certain types of notes (like structure notes) or link types can alter the graph to bring it closer to one or the other appearance.